Looking Death in the Face.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XXII, Issue 3962, 14 December 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

Looking Death in the Face.

HAVE YOU EVER HAD A CLOSER SHAVE THAN ANY OF THESE? imagine being carried one thousand feet into the air by a rope tangled round one leg and yet coming safe again to firm ground, comparatively uninjured! That was the actual experience of an American woman a few weeks ago. Miss Daily, the well-known balloonist, was making an ascent from Middleton, Now York, when a guy rope whirling ats the balloon sprang upwards caught a woman in the crowd by one leg and carried her up. She succeeded in dragging the rope up hand over* hand till she clutched the screaming victim by tho hair. Then sho

opened the,-valve and allowed the balloon to descend.' — Three persons out of every five can relate from personal ‘experience some desperately narrow escape, can tell of some moment when they stood in the vary shadow of death and yet escaped. Our King himself has more than onco been in desperate danger, yet escaped scatheless. Once it was from the bullet of the Anarchist Sipido and again aboard Sir Thomas Lipton’e yacht. Shamrock ll.' Heeling from a stiff breeze the hobstay bolt gave way and the bows-prit snapped short off. The mast, deprived of support, then buckled and broke in two places. Had tiro accident happened about ten seconds earlier tho enormous boom must have fallen right in tho midst of tho group of whom tho King was ono. Among celebrities who have had very narrow escapes, none ever had a nearer one than Charles Dickens. Ho was qu ono of his reading tours and. seated in a special glass fronted conpo just behind tho engine when there was a torrilic cnadr, and a mass of iron was hurled through the window ‘ and pierced tho woodwork just above the groat novelist’s head. The driving wheel of tho engine had broken to fragments. Tho great Alpinist, Mr. Whympor, was once alone orr the heights of the Matterhorn—tho great mountain' was at that tinro a virgin peak—when, in crossing a deep snow‘-covered gully, ho slipped and fell. He wont down backwards at ever increasing speed and distinctly felt his head crashed against rock after rocic, yet at tho time experienced no pain. Ho had made rtp his mind to dio. Suddenly, Iris body caught against something, and ho was pulled up short by a projecting crag, tic found that he had stopped on tho very verge of nothingness. Among peculiar escapes none more odd was that recorded than that of Herr H. Straitz, of Metz, in Germany. -This gentleman was watering his garden with a hoso when ho stepped upon tho surface of an old well which had been covered in. The rotten timbers broke beneath him, and as e fell tiro sides of tho well collapsed and buried him alivo in a grave nearly twenty feet deep. It was hours before the rescueparty reached him. Naturally they iiover expected to sco more than bio dead body. Imagine their amazement to find him comparatively uninjured! In Iris fall ho had retained his hold on tho hoso. This had snapped at the connection with tho water main, and ho was able to breatho through the pipe until dug out. Air extraordinary accident happened in Dublin in November, 1902. Ono night during a thick fog a cab with four people itr it drove straight over tho quay side into tho Alexandra .uasin. lly a sort of miracle tire vehicle fell right across tho mooring rope of a ship, the cab on one side and tiro horse on the other. This kept tiro cab from sinking, and driver and passengers wore rescued. A more horrible predicament than that irr which Thomas Powers, a hotelkeeper at Hamilton, in Canada, found himself is difficult to imagine. Ho went down to his refrigerator to get_ some ice, tho door swung to and imprisoned him in an airless, six-loot by four box with the temperature at freezing poirrt and, of course, in pitch, darkness. Ho shouted, but in vain. The door was a font thick, and fastened by a spring lock. No one came, and the man was rapidly suffocating when his hand happened to fall upon a loose strip of timber. He seized it, and with a last effort levered the door open, and fell unconscious outside! Wife: “I’d have you to know I always weigh my words.” Ijjtisband: “Yes, right; and forgot to i™ r o good measure.'* Johnny: “What’s silence, Freddy?'’ Freddy :“Tt’s what you don’t hear when you listen.”